Hard Choices
by Chartreuse Sky
Summary: After Edward has returned to her, Bella is resolved to have him and Jacob in her life.  What cost is she willing to pay to get her way?


A/N: I don't own any of the characters used in the following story. This is my first fan fiction so I welcome any comments etc.

Facing the Music

Bella woke up tired but resolved. Edward had left for a short hunting trip and she had decided that it was time to face Jacob again. As content as she had been to revel in Edward's continued presence in her life once again, the last confrontation with Jacob in the woods nagged at the back of her mind like a festering wound. Charlie had eased up the house arrest restrictions this week and it was time to visit Jacob. Bella worried about how he would react to seeing her but was determined to make him understand.

Bella went through her morning routine at a slower pace than normal. Rather than rushing around as she did when she knew Edward would be waiting outside in the silver Volvo, she spent more time cleaning up her room after showering and did her breakfast dishes more diligently than usual. _Enough procrastinating,_ Bella thought to herself. _It's time to face the music_. She got in her truck and headed toward La Push.

Even her slow old Chevy brought her into La Push before she was ready. She sat and took a few breaths to calm herself down. _What's the worse that can happen? He could refuse to talk to me. He could yell. He could be disappointed. He could refuse to be my friend anymore. _The more she thought about it, the worse the possibilities because. _No. I will not lose my best friend over this._

Bella walked up to the front door and knocked. Billy Black opened the door and looked up at her from his wheelchair. He did not look pleased to see her.

"Hi Billy. Is Jacob around?"

"He's not here, Bella."

There was an awkward pause. Bella knew how Billy felt about her boyfriend and his family, but he was usually friendlier to her than this. Not since Jacob went through his change and Billy was protecting his secret was he this cold to Bella.

"Do you where he is?"

"He's out."

"Do you know when he'll be back, Billy?"

"No."

He wasn't inviting her in or giving any hint of letting up the frosty welcome. Bella decided she didn't need to get into it any more than necessary and gave up her attempts to get any useful information from Billy. Not only did she have a hard conversation with Jacob before her – assuming he would even talk to her – but she also would have to explain to Edward that she had been down here. That would not be fun, to say the least.

"Ok. Please let him know I came by, if that's not too much trouble." Bella returned to her truck, fuming a little under her breath. She knew she should be more generous to Billy, since his attitude was probably, at bottom, coming from concern for Jacob, Charlie and maybe even herself. _But, really, did he have to be such a prat_? She decided to wait in her truck to see if Jacob returned. This could be her only chance for a while and she was already here.

After an hour of sitting outside the house, alternating between going through what she wanted to say, forecasting the terribly ways the conversation could go, and then chiding herself for obsessing, a rapping on the window shook her out of her trance. Jacob was standing outside the driver's side with his arms crossed and that cold expression she hated on his face.

She rolled down the window, needing the comfort and support of her dependable truck beneath her to steel her against his look. "Hi Jake. Can we talk?"

Jacob was silent. "What do you want, Bella?"

Bella grimaced. _Yep. This is going to be even worse that I imagined._ "I want to talk to you Jake. Please let me at least try to explain. Can we walk down to the beach?"

Jacob's stonily look eased up very slightly but then he grimaced. "No." Bella's heart sank. "Walking along the beach with you brings up too many memories that I am working on forgetting." Bella said nothing but the pain was clear on her face. Jacob sighed. "We can walked down to James Island, if you want."

Bella scrambled out of her truck before he could change his mind. They walked the short distance down toward the pier where the small drop of land of James Island created the emblematic silhouette of La Push's coastline. They sat on the rocks closest to the island.

Jacob looked intently out to the Island and was silent. Bella took a breath, organized her thoughts and started.

"Jake. I want to explain. Will you please at least look at me?" He looked down and reluctantly dragged his inhuman glare over to Bella. _Oh, that's __much__ better _she thought sarcastically. She sighed.

"You are my best friend. You brought me back to life when I thought there was nothing that could have done that. We said we would be friends no matter what." _You promised._ She couldn't say it out loud – couldn't throw that in his face after she had been the one to cause this rift. "You must know how much Edward meant to me. You saw me after he left. Can you try to imagine what it does when the one person that is everything to you is suddenly gone from your life?"

Jacob laughed briefly and mirthlessly. "Yes, Bella. I can understand that pain. I live that pain." For an instance Bella thought that he was talking about his mother. She suddenly understood and was silent. She finally spoke but he voice was barely above a whisper.

"Jake. I don't want to hurt you. You are my best friend. You are the only one I could ever talk to. You may be the only true friend I have had. It is nice to be known. You, more than almost anyone, know me. But I am not me without Edward. And he's back and he's not leaving again. It certainly changes things but I don't want it to change our friendship."

"How can it not, Bella?? How can we be friends when you are with a bloodsu—with ..Edward? He and his horrendous kind are the sole reason that I became this – against my will." He started shaking. Bella cautiously waited until he had calmed himself enough to stop the shaking.

"Edward and his family isn't like the rest of them. I need for you to understand this. He would never hurt me."

"He has hurt you worse than most people are hurt in their lives. How can you say that he would never hurt you???"

Bella sighed. _What can I say? He's not wrong. But it hurt Edward too. Oh god._ "Yes, I was hurt." _Understatement of the year._ "He left because he thought I would have a better life without him. He was wrong. Please, Jake. It doesn't have to be like this." Bella was almost pleading by the end of it.

Jacob was softening. That much was clear from his face. As much as he didn't want to listen, he understood what Bella was saying to some extent. He thought of Edward and the last time they had seen each other. And his features became stony cold again. "In the forest. You seemed to have made up your mind. You can't mean to become one of them." Jacob could barely get the words out. He seemed to suffocate beneath the very idea.

Bella waited to speak as she struggled with her reaction. _That's none of your goddamn business! Calm down. He's coming at it from a much different place. He doesn't understand. What I choose to do with my life is my decision. _A war waged within her. She was split between the strongest desire she had to be with Edward forever and a defense of the family that had already begun to think of as her own, and her friendship with Jacob and the need not to hurt him anymore than necessary. "I mean to be with Edward forever," she said finally.

Jacob trembled. His voice was as hard as his face had become. "Then we cannot be friends. I cannot be your friend if you are choosing to become my enemy. It's better to end it now, cleanly, after things have already gone south. We can't go back to being friends for a while with the impending doom of your desired future hanging over me. I will not stand by and watch my friend become everything I am born to hate. I won't let you do to me what he did to you when he left you."

_How can I respond to that? He's wrong. I wouldn't be his enemy. He just doesn't understand. Why won't he understand? Not all vampires are evil. They don't have to be enemies. We don't have to be enemies. I won't let us._ "Jake. I will always be your friend. Whatever may happen in the future will not change that. I know that it won't."

They argued back and forth for some time with Jacob angry and trying to protect himself while Bella implored him to try to make it work with her. Jacob finally hurled a question at her: "How can you be with someone who is willing to turn you into a monster?"

Bella shook her head. This was a sore subject. "He's not really willing."

"What?"

"I don't know why I'm telling you this, but Edward doesn't want me to change. He doesn't want me to loose my humanity."

Jacob thought about that for a moment. He grudgingly conceded an inch. "That's the first thing I have heard about him that actually makes me think he might actually have a shred of decency, despite his condition."

They were quiet for some time, each lost in their own head. Finally Jacob broke the silence. A possibility had occurred to him. "Bella, do you really care about our friendship?"

"Of course I do."

"If we were to try to really be good friends to each other again, would you be willing to make sacrifices for our friendship?"

Bella looked at Jacob suspiciously. "Are you negotiating with me? You'll be my friend if I promise not to ever become a vampire?" These negotiations were getting tiring. Why was it that everyone who mattered to her was so opposed to her doing the one thing that truly mattered?

Jacob sighed. "No. I'm not saying 'ever'. I'm saying that I can try to be friends if I know that there is some room to breath. If I am worried that you could become my enemy at any given moment, I could hardly trust you with my life and my secrets. If I knew that there was some guarantee that you would be the precious human I used to be friends for some time, then maybe I could do it."

"I don't know Jacob. I need to think about it. I'm not saying no. I'm saying I don't know."

"You can think about it."

They were silent again. Almost an hour passed and the sun started to sink over the ocean. Bella got up. "I need to head home. I'm still thinking."

"Ok. Can we hang out sometime, while you're thinking it over?" Jacob hoped he wasn't too transparent. More time away from the bloodsucker and with him would hopefully sway her, even if only a little.

"Sure. I'd like that." Bella was too relived by the progress she had made at melting his frozen façade to question him.

"Great. When do you think Edward will let you come visit again?" The bitterness swelled up and Jacob couldn't stop the words before they were out.

Bella's temper flared. "You're not making this any easier Jake. I don't ask Edward's permission and he doesn't tell me what I can and cannot do. We can hang out on Thursday after school, unless you're planning to make rude comments about my boyfriend the entire time."

Jacob knew he had been wrong to bate her about Edward and was thrilled that she had named a day so soon. He had been prepared to wait weeks for another visit. Maybe she really did care about their friendship. He backed down a little. "I'm sorry. I'll try not to do that again. Thursday is perfect."

They walked back to Bella's Chevy and said an awkward goodbye. Bella drove back toward Forks with her emotions in turmoil. The conversation had gone both much better and much worse than expected. One the plus side, at least Jacob was talking to her now and even being mostly friendly about it. On the negative, well, where to begin? He was threatening to refuse to be her friend if she turned into a vampire, he hated Edward as passionately as ever, and now, as she turned toward home, the dread of explaining her day's excursion to Edward began to set in. Just as she thought with relief that she would at least have time to shower the werewolf aromas away before Edward returned from hunting, she pulled into her driveway and saw the Silver Volvo. _Oh shit._

Back at La Push, Jacob was in his room, trying not to examine his own motives too closely. He tried to tell himself that he was buying time with Bella's life – finding any way to convince her to stay human longer so that she would have time to realize what an enormous mistake it was that she was so eager to make. But some part of him wondered if he was just being weak and didn't have the courage to cut her out of his life the way that he should. A werewolf shouldn't trust a wanna-be and maybe gonna-be vampire under any circumstances. Certainly not these circumstances.


End file.
